It’s a been a long month since we last updated the site and reported the cancellations of all foreseeable J-League fixtures due to the disastrous Tohoku earthquake and ensuing Tsunami that struck Japan on March 11th.
Naturally, the postponement of a few football games was a decision that we all wholeheartedly agreed with and to be honest, after experiencing a great many aftershocks over the past few weeks coupled with blackouts and nuclear reactor concerns you can bet that football has been the last thing on our minds of late…

That said however, the club has been training and playing friendly games during the interim so we actually have a fair bit of news to catch up on so without further ado, here’s whats been happening over the past 5 weeks!

・J-League to re-start!
Yes! The news we have all been waiting for! The J-League announced that the league shall resume play as of April 23rd. Many of the teams that are based in the Tohoku area will have to play their home games in different cities due in part to the damages sustained by the mega-quake but also due to the fact that very large aftershocks are still occurring throughout the entire region. Sendai of course will have a tough travel schedule but so will Kashima who, being based in Ibaraki, have had more than their fair share of aftershocks too. Our first game back is actually an away game against Kashima but due to safety concerns, the match has been scheduled to take place at the Tokyo International Stadium instead…
・Canceled fixtures have been re-scheduled!
Well, all the J-League games anyway. The 5 games that were canceled have now been re-scheduled. The new fixture dates are as follows:

Don’t forget to make a note of the new dates and if there any further last-minute changes, we’ll let you all know immediately!

・6 Training matches played!
Over the past month, the first team has played a total of 6 training games against teams of various levels. The details are a little exhausting so we shall abbreviate the results into a basic date, team, and score breakdown:

If you want see the details of who scored in each of the games, please click on each fixture for a link to the official site (In Japanese)

・Sayonara Bastianini…
Sadly we end this month in review with the disappointing news that Argentinian forward, Pablo Bastianini, has been officially released by the club as of Friday due to the player expressing a strong desire to return to his native country. His wife had returned to Argentina ahead of him shortly after the earthquake to give birth to their newborn child and so with a concerned family and fatherhood calling, Pablo made the request for the club to release him from his contract and let him return home.
He left saying that he “was extremely sorry for the sudden request to go home and that I will always be grateful to my teammates, coaching staff, and supporters and will never forget their warm heartedness”

…And that just about wraps up the football related news of the past month! Next up, Kashima away next weekend!!

Always happy to hear from your side Brendan. I’ve been doing my best to follow everything as it has unfolded. I also managed to pick up the Team as one Japan jersey, through a good friend in Osaka.. The yellow shirts though are like gold dust!

I think we will surprise tonight/today there. Enjoy the match and my condolences to anyone you know effected by the tragedy.